Lisa Batiashvili and Daniel Harding

Lisa Batiashvili and Daniel Harding

Lisa Batiashvili has enjoyed international success as the soloist in Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto. However, she has never played the piece with the Berliner Philharmoniker before. To perform the concerto as part of her residency is therefore a special event; “There is a great Brahms tradition here, characterised by a warm, dark sound and precise articulation,” she says. “I’m really looking forward to immersing myself in the Brahms sound of the orchestra.” The conductor is Daniel Harding, standing in for an indisposed Daniel Barenboim. Harding will also conduct Beethoven’s Fifth, a symphony that epitomises classicism in music.

Jakub Hrůša & Lisa Batiashvili

Jakub Hrůša & Lisa Batiashvili

Jakub Hrůša & Lisa Batiashvili

Daniel Harding

Daniel Harding is a welcome guest at the helm of the BRSO. This time he will conduct a programme fully deserving of the title “from adversity to the stars”. Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel Symphony of 2020 was commissioned by several orchestras, including the BRSO. Here he takes up important passages from his like-named opera, premièred at the Salzburg Festival in 2016, and combines them into a four-movement symphony. The starting point was a surrealist film by Luis Buñuel, in which a group of high-bred socialites gather together for a party and are condemned to a nightmarish journey. Adès has supplied music at once exciting and weirdly grotesque. Following this surrealistic vision of Hell there begins a very real heaven-assailing ascent to the heights with Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony.

Daniel Harding

Daniel Harding is a welcome guest at the helm of the BRSO. This time he will conduct a programme fully deserving of the title “from adversity to the stars”. Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel Symphony of 2020 was commissioned by several orchestras, including the BRSO. Here he takes up important passages from his like-named opera, premièred at the Salzburg Festival in 2016, and combines them into a four-movement symphony. The starting point was a surrealist film by Luis Buñuel, in which a group of high-bred socialites gather together for a party and are condemned to a nightmarish journey. Adès has supplied music at once exciting and weirdly grotesque. Following this surrealistic vision of Hell there begins a very real heaven-assailing ascent to the heights with Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony.

Daniel Harding

Night walk with Daniel Harding: in the somber Funeral March, Gustav Mahler’s shadowy, gloomy Seventh Symphony emerges as “the psychogram of a compulsive existence” (Wolfgang Stähr). Nachtmusik I, characterized by a horn duet, casts a wistful glance into bygone times; the Scherzo acquires a restless, spooky character; and Nachtmusik II becomes a nocturnal serenade especially through the presence of a guitar and a mandolin, instruments rarely found in an orchestra. After the eerie nocturnal atmosphere of the previous movements, the work’s gigantic finale transports the listener towards the light – a change of mood that left the audience attending the work’s premiere somewhat perplexed. Today, Mahler’s Seventh is considered a masterpiece of symphonic form, as will be exemplified in Mahler specialist Daniel Harding’s performance.

Daniel Harding

Night walk with Daniel Harding: in the somber Funeral March, Gustav Mahler’s shadowy, gloomy Seventh Symphony emerges as “the psychogram of a compulsive existence” (Wolfgang Stähr). Nachtmusik I, characterized by a horn duet, casts a wistful glance into bygone times; the Scherzo acquires a restless, spooky character; and Nachtmusik II becomes a nocturnal serenade especially through the presence of a guitar and a mandolin, instruments rarely found in an orchestra. After the eerie nocturnal atmosphere of the previous movements, the work’s gigantic finale transports the listener towards the light – a change of mood that left the audience attending the work’s premiere somewhat perplexed. Today, Mahler’s Seventh is considered a masterpiece of symphonic form, as will be exemplified in Mahler specialist Daniel Harding’s performance.

Daniel Harding

Night walk with Daniel Harding: in the somber Funeral March, Gustav Mahler’s shadowy, gloomy Seventh Symphony emerges as “the psychogram of a compulsive existence” (Wolfgang Stähr). Nachtmusik I, characterized by a horn duet, casts a wistful glance into bygone times; the Scherzo acquires a restless, spooky character; and Nachtmusik II becomes a nocturnal serenade especially through the presence of a guitar and a mandolin, instruments rarely found in an orchestra. After the eerie nocturnal atmosphere of the previous movements, the work’s gigantic finale transports the listener towards the light – a change of mood that left the audience attending the work’s premiere somewhat perplexed. Today, Mahler’s Seventh is considered a masterpiece of symphonic form, as will be exemplified in Mahler specialist Daniel Harding’s performance.

Daniel Harding

Night walk with Daniel Harding: in the somber Funeral March, Gustav Mahler’s shadowy, gloomy Seventh Symphony emerges as “the psychogram of a compulsive existence” (Wolfgang Stähr). Nachtmusik I, characterized by a horn duet, casts a wistful glance into bygone times; the Scherzo acquires a restless, spooky character; and Nachtmusik II becomes a nocturnal serenade especially through the presence of a guitar and a mandolin, instruments rarely found in an orchestra. After the eerie nocturnal atmosphere of the previous movements, the work’s gigantic finale transports the listener towards the light – a change of mood that left the audience attending the work’s premiere somewhat perplexed. Today, Mahler’s Seventh is considered a masterpiece of symphonic form, as will be exemplified in Mahler specialist Daniel Harding’s performance.